Supreme Court temporarily blocks Congress from getting Trump income tax returns

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday temporarily blocked the House Ways and Means Committee from obtaining years of federal income tax returns of former President Donald Trump from the IRS.

Roberts’ order came a day after Trump’s lawyers filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court requesting the delay, and two days before the IRS was set to give the committee the Republican’s tax returns.

The chief justice gave the Ways and Means Committee until Nov. 10 to respond to Trump’s application for the delay.

Trump wants the Supreme Court to block the committee from getting his tax returns for the years 2015 through 2020 until he formally asks the high court to allow him to appeal lower court rulings that cleared the way for the records to be handed over.

The Supreme Court does not automatically grant appeals. It is not clear if Trump will convince enough justices on the court, three of whom he appointed, to take his case.

A federal judge in December ordered the IRS to give Trump’s records to the committee, which has said it wants them as part of a probe of how the agency audits presidential returns.

Trump then appealed the order to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit but lost that effort in August.

A three-judge panel of the appeals court, in a unanimous decision that month, noted that while tax returns, as a rule, are confidential under federal law, an exception is when the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee requests returns in writing from the secretary of the Treasury Department, the parent of the IRS.

Last week, the appeals court denied Trump’s request that a larger panel of judges on that court reconsider the case. That lead to his emergency application asking the Supreme Court to intervene.

Roberts has authority over emergency applications issued from the D.C. circuit court.

A lawyer for Trump and a spokeswoman for the Ways and Means Committee did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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